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Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

holiday card

White on White with Amazing Paper Grace!

Hi there! I am laid up in bed sick (thanks winter germs from school… blah!), and so thought I’d catch up on blogging some projects that I haven’t gotten around to sharing here. I helped Spellbinders create some projects for their winter catalog over the summer using the Seasonal Label Motifs product suite (which is on sale at the moment!), and I shared the first four HERE. But, there were two different winter die sets, and I realized that I never shared the fifth project using the Holiday Label Motifs dies that I created for the catalog here with you all!

I can’t get enough of white on white with that bright pop of red for Christmas cards. I love non-traditional color schemes so much for the holidays, but there’s something so elegant and timeless about bright, crisp white with that cheery, festive red!

I began by die cutting the main label image and the background from the Holiday Label Motifs die set from some plain, white cardstock. I also cut the lantern image from some of Spellbinders’s White Glitter Foam to add some extra fun texture and some sparkle. I adhered the background to my white A2 card front with some tape runner (I find that liquid glue sometimes causes warping on large die cut panels like this), then added the detail “burst” layer with some foam adhesive to add some extra dimension and height. With these monochromatic layers, adding the extra height is an important way to keep those layers from disappearing into one another. I did add a touch of amber alcohol marker to the candle’s flame to add that tiny bit of warmth to the scene.

Next, I die cut several of the poinsettias, berries, and foliage from some cardstock from Spellbinders. If you haven’t checked out the Spellbinders cardstock line, I highly encourage it. I am a bit of a colored cardstock junkie, and Spellbinders has become one of my top five favorite cardstock brands. They have a huge variety of beautiful colors, and the super smooth surface makes them amazing for hot foiling. For today’s card, I used Lagoon, Blue Spruce, and Poppy Field cardstocks to die cut the different flora. I arranged them in a festive swag above my glittery lantern, and adhered them with a mixture of foam tape and liquid adhesive to create lots of different levels of height and tons of dimension. I added a greeting from the Seasonal Motifs Sentiments stamp set stamped on white using black ink. The final touch was to add a few Opal adhesive gems from Spellbinders to the center of the poinsettias and to accent the swag. I love the subtle shine and added texture these gems add to the card.

Well, that’s all for this project! I have a few holiday projects that I’ve not shared here yet, so hopefully I will be able to get them up before Christmas… I can’t believe that it’s only 12 days away. Yikes! And if you liked this die set, the entire collection is on sale right now for a great price. It might be too late to use for this year’s projects, but I love buying holiday supplies on great sales to save for next year! (Check out their sale section, too.) Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks…

Hi there! Did you know that Pinkfresh Studio has a monthly challenge? At the start of each month, the folks at Pinkfresh Studio provide a great graphic with a challenge topic and color scheme to jumpstart your creativity. You can enter your projects for a chance to win a $50 shopping spree to the Pinkfresh Studio store! You can check out all of the details HERE. This month’s challenge prompt is the appropriately-timed Happy Holidays! I pulled out a bunch of the beautiful new holiday products from the October 2022 release along with Candy Apple, Sparkling Rose, Meadow, Evergreen, and Sky Blue inks to create this festive and colorful shaker card. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I heat embossed the Holiday City View stamp on a panel of white cardsock using white pearl embossing powder. I used the coordinating stencils, blending brushes, and the Candy Apple, Sparkling Rose, Meadow, Evergreen, and Sky Blue inks to add lots of vivid color to the background. I love how graphic and versatile this background stamp is! It can absolutely be used outside of the holidays, maybe for a “congratulations on your new home” card or “welcome to the neighborhood”!

To add to the holiday feel of the color scheme, I used the Festive Leaves layering stencils with the Candy Apple, Sparkling Rose, and Meadow inks. I then cut the finished blended images out with the coordinating dies. I love these die cuts of simple holiday greenery! The simplicity of the images works beautifully with the equally-simple stenciled, color-blocked background.

To create my shaker card front, I die cut the Ornate Oval Frame from the center of a white A2 card front, reserving both the positive and negative pieces. I like to try to keep the cellophane packaging when I receive new stamp sets, and some old stamp packaging was the perfect backer for this flat shaker! I backed the full size negative-space A2 panel with this recycled cellophane, then nestled the die cut itself inside and adhered it with some strong tape. I added lots of fun sequins and snowflakes to the inside of the shaker and adhered it using more strong tape, not foam tape. The flat sequins still shake beautifully and it is so much easier to mail!

Once I had completed my shaker card front, I added a couple of hot foiled Brushed Sentiments: Holiday greeting die cuts, hot foiled with Champagne hot foil and die cut with the coordinating dies. I popped the greeting up with some thicker foam tape, then arranged the holiday greenery in a little swag around the sentiment and adhered them with a combination of thin foam tape and liquid adhesive to add lots of different layers of height. The final touch was to add a few Magenta Glitter Drops for one last touch of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for this project today! I hope you’ll take a peek at the Pinkfresh Studio Challenge. I have always found that challenges are such a great way to jumpstart your creativity, and can often open the floodgates for even more creative inspiration. I can’t believe we are only a couple of weeks away from Christmas… I’m not ready for the festive holiday fun to be over yet! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

New Anita Jeram Holiday Stamps from Colorado Craft Company+Free Shipping Days!

Hi there! I am hopping along with Colorado Craft Company today using some of their absolutely darling Christmas Take II holiday stamps from Anita Jeram. You should have arrived here from Donna Hitz, and your next stop is Erin Thompson. You can also start back at the beginning at Adrienne Kennedy CCC. These sweet little storybook critters have stolen my heart, and the precious holiday scenes and beautiful, poignant sentiments add such a unique element to your holiday cards. I have two projects that allow the darling images to be the stars of the show, along with some bright pops of Christmas color. Let’s get started with the details on my projects!

I couldn’t resist doing some simple coloring with my OLO markers on these precious little scenes. I stamped the scenes using Altenew’s Obsidian pigment ink, then added clear embossing powder over the top. I wanted to create super crisp black lines that popped from my colorful marker coloring, and the clear embossing powder over the top of the black pigment ink adds an element of shiny texture in addition to making the lines even more crisp and clean.

For my first project, I used the adorable new Sled Bunny stamps , first by embossing the images on a panel of white cardstock. I then used OLO markers to add some quick coloring to the bunny, sled, and his modest gift. The bunny reminds me of my kiddos working so diligently to bring me their handmade gifts from school!

Once I had finished coloring my image, I trimmed down the panel so that it was smaller than an A2 card. To accent the red sled and add a festive feel to the card, I die cut a candy cane cover plate die from some super shiny red foil. I adhered it to the A2 card front using a tape runner to avoid liquid glue squishing out the side and marring my shiny foil, then added the stamped and colored panel using some foam adhesive. Simple, but it will mail beautifully and without any extra postage! Score!

The coloring on my second card was a bit more intense. I stamped a scene using the But First, Presents set, again stamping with black pigment ink and clear embossing over the top to make the lines incredibly crisp and stark. I used my OLO markers in shades of minty green, holiday red, and gray to add lots of festive, vibrant color to my card front and create a cute little gray and white kitty that looks just like my Joey kitty!

To help create a little scene around my stamped and colored images, I used some light tack painter’s tape to tape down a mask around the edge of my scene, allowing the streamers above to hang over the edge. I used a blending brush to lightly blend some pale gray ink around the edges of my masked area, just to help further highlight the colorful holiday scene on my card front.

Below my festive scene, I stamped a greeting from Candy Cane Mice. I love the scale and font selection on these Anita Jeram stamp sets; it’s whimsical while still being elegant and large enough that the sentiments are easy to read! The crisp black sentiment accent the crisp black lines on the images themselves so beautifully. This one layer card packs a lot of punch with zero foam tape! (I bet you thought I couldn’t make a card without foam tape, ha!)

Well, that’s all for my projects today! Colorado Craft Company is hosting a wonderful giveaway: one commenter from each stop on the hop will be selected to receive a stamp set from the new release! Simply leave a comment on all of the hop stops for maximum chances to win. Enter by December 4 to be counted for the giveaway! Winners will be announced on the Colorado Craft Company blog.

You can also shop using THIS LINK to enter to win a huge giveaway from the release. When you shop using an affiliate link, not only does the person whose link you’re using get to make a little extra money, but you are also entering yourself into a super generous giveaway! Thank you so much to those of you who have used my links to shop in the past; I and my family appreciate it more than you know! And don’t forget: on December 2nd and 3rd you will receive free shipping on all orders!

Your next stop on the hop is Erin Thompson. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!

Video: Adding Tons of Sparkle to your Holiday Cards!

Hi there! Today, I am over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel with this holiday card that has so much sparkle, you might need some sunglasses to look at it! Sparkle is one of my favorite ways to differentiate my holiday cards from the cards that I make the rest of the year. If you can’t add sparkle on Christmas cards, when can you add sparkle? It just makes them so terribly festive!! Here’s the video:

Or you can click HERE to watch it on YouTube in HD.

This entire card began when I was experimenting with the new-ish Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate. I love the look of hot foiling on vellum, but I get mixed results, and I read somewhere that you could heat emboss on Hero Arts’s acetate. I thought to myself “if you can heat emboss on it, can you hot foil on it?” I feared that it would melt and ruin my plate, but it was a risk I was willing to take… and just look at the result!! I am so in love with this new-to-me technique, and I can’t wait to apply it to other projects. I hot foiled the Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate on some acetate using Speckled Prism hot foil from Spellbinders, which creates a beautiful, iridescent effect, which is particularly striking on the clear acetate!

Once I had my snowflake acetate panel, I knew that I wanted to create a snowy scene with snowflakes in various sizes, so I heat embossed the Snowflakes Background stamp on some watercolor paper using White Satin Pearl embossing powder. I taped the panel down to my watercolor board, spritzed the entire panel with some clean water using a fingertip sprayer, then used Sennelier watercolors to add some diagonal color. I started with a few stripes of blue, blended that into some minty turquoise, then created a custom purple by mixing the same blue with some bright magenta. The already-damp watercolor paper helped the colors to meld together beautifully and seamlessly. I hit the very wet panel with my heat gun and added some Winsor & Newton Iridescent Medium along the blue areas to create a sparkly, wintry, almost Aurora Borealis effect on my background. Once that had dried, I added some Payne’s Grey around the edges, pulling the color out to a nice fade using a clean damp brush, which created a halo effect around my sparkly AB background.

While my panel was drying, I created a frame using some pure white glitter cardstock and the Stitched Rectangles Essentials Dies. I used some super strong tape to adhere my clear snowflake panel to the sparkling frame. Once my watercolor panel had dried, I used some thin foam squares to adhere the framed acetate panel to my watercolored piece. I love how the foiled snowflakes look as though they’re floating on the watercolored background!

For the greeting, I heat embossed two different sentiments from the Ornaments Stamp set onto some Spellbinders Waterfall cardstock using white embossing powder. I used the Ornaments Dies to die cut the cursive greeting, which I think makes it look so incredibly clean and polished. I die cut the solid halo piece from the Jeff Alpha dies from some more Waterfall cardstock, then die cut the detail layer using the same white glitter cardstock, adhering them together with liquid adhesive. I added them to the clear snowflake panel with small dots of liquid adhesive to keep everything nice and clean, orienting them in the bottom right corner to allow the hot foiled snowflakes and watercoloring to take center stage!

Well, that’s all for this project and video! I can’t wait to try this hot foil-on-acetate technique out on more projects, and I hope you’ll try it out too. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Metallic Hot Foils with Crisp White!

Hi there! I have been playing with my Glimmer Hot Foil machine from Spellbinders, along with some of the new hot foil products from Spellbinders. I truly can’t decide which I love more: intense, vibrant color or bright, crisp white. I seem to go from one extreme to the other! Today’s projects feature plenty of clean white space, with lots of texture and shining, sparkling metallic accents.

When working with white on white, I like to create tons of layers of cardstock, with lots of different types of texture and several layers of foam tape. Limited color palettes can be very interesting and super elegant, as long as you are intentional with your layers and accents!

My first project features the Glimmering Swag Hot Foil Plate. I began by hot foiling this beautiful pattern on a crisp white panel of white cardstock using gold foil. This pattern is super elegant and works with so many different occasions!

While I had my hot foil machine out and hot, I hot foiled the Geo Foliage Hot Foil Plate set, creating an elegant thin hexagonal frame. I backed the frame with some heavyweight vellum to help mute the foiled pattern, to create a softer area for my sentiment. One of my favorite things about hot foil is that you can mix and match different products and make them all feel cohesive by using the same shade of metallic foil! The foliage from the Geo Foliage set looks like it was meant to go with the Glimmering Swag Hot Foil Plate because I used the same gold foil for both.

I paired the foiled foliage with some Holiday Blooms die cuts, cut from both white cardstock and some gold glitter foam to add another element of texture. Adding different textures in the same color help to add even more interest to the limited color palette. I arranged the white poinsettia and foliage in a swag at the top of my hot foiled vellum hexagon, then popped the entire piece up on the hot foiled card front using foam adhesive for extra height.

For the greeting, I die cut Christmas Mix & Match Sentiments dies from some more gold glitter foam. I adhered it to the center of my hot foiled hexagon using liquid adhesive. The gold and white color combination is so luxurious and elegant with multiple types of metallic gold. Definitely one of my favorite holiday cards that I’ve made this year!

My next card features the Sealed Swag Hot Foil set from the new Sealed By Spellbinders collection. As soon as I saw this wreath image, I knew that it would be a perfect ground for some pretty die cut blooms. I hot foiled the swag and greeting on some white cardstock using Rose Gold Foil from Spellbinders. I die cut the greeting using the included coordinating die, then used my scissors to fussy cut the hot foiled swag.

To keep the color palette simple and elegant as I did with the first card, I die cut some white flowers using the Be Bold Blooms die set, cutting some from crisp white cardstock and some from some coordinating rose gold glitter cardstock. I created a little arrangement using the die cut flowers and the hot foiled wreath, adhering the different die cuts using both liquid and foam adhesive for extra height.

To create some more texture on this project, I ran a panel of white cardstock through my Platinum 6 machine using the Geo Screen Embossing Folder. This classy pattern adds such beautiful texture to the background of my card front! I trimmed it down slightly and adhered it in the center of an A2 card base, allowing the plain edges to peek out on either side of the textured panel. I adhered the floral swag and hot foiled greeting on the card front using foam adhesive.

Well, that’s all for this project! I love challenging myself with these limited color palette projects. It’s such fun to see how I can incorporate multiple elements of texture, height, and dimension without adding any other colors to the card! Thanks so much for reading, and have a marvelous day!